Novak Djokovic’s father launches scathing attack on the media and makes huge retirement claim
Novak Djokovic’s father is not afraid to voice his views in the media and now he has given his latest explosive interview suggesting his son has been disrespected by the media.
Djokovic fans have long held a view that their hero gets bad treatment from the media and believe an agenda against Serbia is at the root of their animosity.
Djokovic has always shied away from getting involved in wars of words with the media, even though he has suggested he feels his great rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal get better press coverage.
Yet his father Srdjan has never held back in his views and his latest interview lived up to its billing.
He launched passionate attacks against the media and started with his suggestion that they have changed the narrative around his son’s success.
“Federer was the first in the world with 310 weeks, so when Novak reached him, then they said that Steffi Graf had 370 and something weeks, so he reached her too,” he said, as reported by Sportal.
“Then they invented someone there from the pre-open era to have 500 weeks at the top. Do you want it to be in those 500 or so weeks? Well, it will be.”
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Djokovic Snr also reflected on his son’s remarkable journey, as he suggested he even had doubts over whether he would reach the top.
“When we started, we were alone, without an Association, without a city, without a country, without anyone,
“And since I was his junior tennis player when we went to those tournaments, I didn’t have the money to pay for the coach who goes with him, so I he had a father and a mother and a fitness coach and a tennis player and a housewife and everything alive.
“So I realized that we were jealous of those people and children who came from rich countries who had whole teams of coaches and people who took care of them, and I took care of him myself.
“For a long time neither my wife nor he believed what I believed. Because I never let him say that it would be the tenth, twentieth, second, fifth, or seventeenth. No. Just number one.
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“And that was somehow engraved in his being, the core and existence as a tennis player. And he did it seven or eight years ago, and everything he does after that is all an amazing bonus.”
Djokovic Snr then made a bold claim that Novak may retire from tennis in 2024, in comments that will stun his fans.
“This is not his whole life, tennis is only one segment of his life,” he added. “He will only be recognized and known for what he will be doing when he finishes his tennis career, from which he will leave, I hope, next year.
“Let them continue to resent him. I see that they did something wrong to him, I see that he is unsuccessful, that he is behind in development, that he is naturally stupid.
“They are all of them, and he is successful, the most successful, the best in the world.”
